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Start giftingLet Us Descend
A Novel
Bookseller recommendation
“This magical novel illustrates the cruelties of slavery and the indomitable spirit of its protagonist in a descent into the hell of a pre-Civil War Louisiana sugar cane plantation. ”
— Mike • A Great Good Place for Books
Bookseller recommendation
“Jesmyn Ward is one of the most important writers of our time. This may be her best to date. Heartbreaking and gorgeous, Annis carries us through her story of loss and brutal enslavement — a story of strength, love, enduring, and finding a way.”
— Jeanne Costello • Maria's Bookshop
Bookseller recommendation
“When Jesmyn Ward speaks you listen. Her voice in this new novel is so powerful. This novel should be in everyone's hands as it walks you through the life of a young slave girl before the Civil War. Will make a great book club book!”
— Suzanne • Page 158 Books
Bookseller recommendation
“Let Us Descend enveloped me. Jesmyn Ward's rich prose at the sentence level and her sheer determination through all 300 pages of this book are remarkable. I don't feel she once faltered. So many books peter out at the end or lose focus or motivation but not here...The book is a brutal retelling of slavery and the physical/spiritual/mental lengths people have to go to in order to survive with a piece of themselves. I think calling it a reimagining is a fault of publishing and I worry readers, especially Black American readers, will pick up this book hoping to be saved some of the violence and horror of other narratives around slavery. I wept when Annis was free, when she was listening to the toads at the pond. This book lives in me now. No doubt Jesmyn Ward will win the Pulitzer soon.”
— Fawzy • A Room Of One's Own Bookstore
OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • Instant New York Times Bestseller • Shortlisted for the 2024 Carnegie Medal for Excellence
From Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow—comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.
“‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’” —Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.
Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.
Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.
Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.
